PhysioDroid: an app for
physiological data monitoring
Oresti Baños, Miguel Damas, Héctor Pomares, Ignacio Rojas
Department of Computer Architecture and Computer Technology
Research Center for Information and Communications Technologies - University of Granada
{oresti,mdamas,hpomares,irojas}@atc.ugr.es
Peter Glössekötter , Andreas Hermes, Hendrik Mende
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, University of
Applied Sciences Münster
{peter.gloesekoetter,andreas.hermes,hendrik.mende}@fh-muenster.de
The ever progressing technological advances on the development of mobile phones, medical sensors and wireless communication
systems are supporting a new generation of unobtrusive, portable and ubiquitous health monitoring systems for a continuous
patient assessment and a more personalized health care. In this paper we present PhysioDroid, an Android based application
operated together with a wearable monitor capable of measuring vital information such as electrocardiogram (ECG), heart rate
(HR), respiration rate (BR), skin temperature and motion directly from the human body. The application provides gathering, storage
and processing features for the body sensor data. Likewise, the system works as a gateway enabling data transfer to a remote
server which may be used for further processing and analysis. PhysioDroid also implements visualization of physiological
information mainly intended to trigger alerts and emergency calls when abnormalities or risk situations are detected.
Keywords: Physiological monitoring, Health devices, Mobile computing, Wearable computing, eHealth, mHealth, Android, App
Abstract
• Developed countries: health care organizations are facing budget
cuts due to the current financial crisis
• Developing countries: challenges in providing care because of
scarcity of personnel and resources
Global Health Care Context
• Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) appear in this
context with the aim of bringing clinical efficient and cost affordable
health care solutions
• Telemedicine, teleassistance and telemonitoring are recent concepts
that encompass a relevant part of such solutions, empowering
preventative, promotive and curative aspects through the use of
remote technologies
• Among eHealth systems, mobile health (mHealth) devices outstand for
their personalization capabilities as well as for helping eliminate
distance barriers and improving access to medical services that would
often not be consistently available
ICT on Health (eHealth)
• Portable health monitors may provide:
o Continuous monitoring of patient vitals
o Caregivers and practitioners fast response to emergencies
o Seamless profiling and updated description of patients health status
o Health stakeholders (from patient to physicians) more profound
knowledge and awareness of the patient conditions and their
evolution
• Contribute to a new health paradigm:
o Prediction, prevention and proactivity (developed countries)
o Broader care services access and more accurate diagnosis
(developing countries)
Portable health monitors
HARDWARE COMPONENTS
APPLICATION DESCRIPTION
Physiodroid
Android
Mobile Device
Server Portable monitor
(EQ01)
Research/New
developmentsDiagnosis,
Treatment
Emergencies
Structured patient
data
Guidelines,
recommendations
Monitored data
Health
information
ECG, RESP, ACC, HR,
BODY TEMP
This work was supported in part by the Spanish CICYT Project SAF2010-20558, Junta de
Andalucia Project P09-TIC-175476 and the FPU Spanish grant AP2009-2244.
Acknowledgements
• Aim: facilitate access to a
simplified description of
patients’ health profiles as well
as provide alerts on risk
conditions
• Logging and authentication is
used to uniquely identify users
and avoid data disclosure
• Two views (data visualization):
o One for the general user, including
averaged values and visual indicators
of the vital signals status
o Another for the expert analyst that
provides advanced representation of
physiological data waveforms
• Monitored data may be stored
both locally and remotely
(server)
• Guidelines for the app usage
are also provided